


Goodbye, Newtonian mechanics. Hello, special relativity.

by soundingsea



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Gen, Mad Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-17
Updated: 2005-07-17
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:38:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundingsea/pseuds/soundingsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Of course. Wolfram Research. How did I never realize that?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Goodbye, Newtonian mechanics. Hello, special relativity.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [violethamster](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=violethamster).



> Written for the [Fredficathon](http://thomasina75.livejournal.com/161549.html). Thanks to thomasina75 for running it! Spoilers: through "Hellbound", AtS 5x04. Beta: ironchefjoe.

At a quarter to three on Saturday afternoon, Fred jabbed herself in the eye.

"Ouch!" she said, jumping up from the lab bench, squeezing her eye closed and pressing the heel of her hand against it.

A hand fell lightly on her shoulder. "What's wrong?" Knox asked.

Fred jumped again. "Oh! I didn't hear you come in." She smiled. "Even when I'm not wearing glasses, I try to slide them up my nose. Leads to eye-poking. Stupid finger macros."

"Bad habit," Knox affirmed. "One you should... Wait." He looked at the equipment laid out before Fred on the lab bench. Capacitors, logic boards, and circuitry of all description lay heaped in unsorted piles. "I thought Wesley and Charles took all this out to the dumpster days ago."

"It didn't all stay there," Fred explained. "Eve pointed out that the Practical Science department was 800 thousand dollars over budget for the entire quarter--"

"Salvaging a few parts won't put much of a dent in the lab's cost overruns," Knox interrupted, picked up a twisted metal casing and rattling it for emphasis.

Fred smiled, continuing, "So, I figured we should be thinking about commercial applications."

"You want to take this stuff to a scrap metal dealer instead of leaving it for the county recycling pickup?" Knox looked skeptical.

"No, silly, I want to use it," Fred said. She tilted her flat-panel monitor and brought a mathematical model into view. "See, matter transmission would revolutionize the shipping industry, not to mention the travel one..."

Knox looked at her multi-dimensional blueprints as she put the modeling software through its paces. Struck by a sudden thought, he asked, "Are those data sets on the shared array?"

Fred looked puzzled. "Of course not; it's in local scratch for speed."

"Here, toss it on the NetApp," Knox said. "I've got alpha code for the next revision of that modeling package on my workstation."

Fred laughed as she typed a few quick commands. "Of course. Wolfram Research. How did I never realize that?"

"See, I can break the memory barrier and add multicore performance with this new version," said Knox, pulling up a faster-moving, more detailed model.

Fred looked at it with interest. "Just because I couldn't recorporealize Spike with this tech doesn't mean that all our research needs to be wasted."

"Yeah," Knox said with a speculative gleam in his eye. "Next thing you know, we'll be developing Tang."

***

Hours later, the lab was scattered with parts and an archway apparatus occupied a prominent spot in the middle of the floor.

Fred walked around it, admiring the solid structure. "Goodbye, Newtonian mechanics. Hello, special relativity."

"Speaking of Newton," Knox said, flipping up his welding goggles, "You know that thing about standing on the shoulders of giants?"

"And seeing farther. Right," Fred answered absently, making an adjustment to the device's control mechanism.

Knox tossed his goggles on the lab bench. "Last year, we had piggy-back races at the company picnic. I actually got to try out that standing on a giant thing." He grimaced.

"Not all it's cracked up to be?" Fred giggled.

"If we're talking ribs, then yeah. I don't think the giants got the point of the game." Knox laughed. "Sure, it's funny in retrospect. Not so much at the time." Running some current through the archway, he watched the pattern of the electricity.

Before Fred could make more adjustments, Angel poked his head into the lab, eying sparks and archway alike with suspicion. "Uh, Fred?"

"Yes, Angel?" she asked, waving Knox away from the device.

Angel looked at Knox out of the corner of his eye. "Whenever you're finished whatever it is that you're doing, could we talk about maybe juicing up some weapons?"

Gesturing at Angel, Knox asked, "What about him? He'd be a good test subject, being sentient and all."

Fred's eyes widened. "Right. It's just parameterized bifurcation. Simple, in theory."

Angel whirled from one to the other in increasing worry. "Just wait a minute. What do you want me to do?"

"In the interest of science, step through this archway and tell us how it feels." Knox suggested.

"What, exactly, is this going to do?" Angel asked suspiciously.

Fred explained, "The topology of spacetime allows for shortcuts--"

Knox continued, "Yes, because you're homeomorphic." Angel's brows shot up.

"That means the you over there," Fred gestured towards the far end of the lab, "Is essentially the same as the you over here. Assuming this works and transmits you."

Angel looked confused. "One me is enough. And if it weren't, I've got Spike."

"Don't worry, Angel," Fred assured him. "The matter transporter should work, sorta. Since it approximates the sine wave, it's a little bit... lossy."

"Like my nose coming off or something?" Angel said in dismay. "I want to go on record as being against that."

Knox snickered. "More like... it cuts some corners in translation."

"Don't worry, Angel," Fred said. "Sure, it seems to have made few lab rats crazy, but that's just because it produced mild discrepancies in their cellular structure. And you're already dead! You don't have to worry about that. It will be fine."

"The great git isn't going to help you in the advancement of technical knowledge, love," Spike said, materializing next to a rack of beakers. "He's afraid of his own cell phone."

Angel bristled. "I am not. I just can't figure out how to turn off the alarm, and... Okay, then. But you're coming with me."

Spike shrugged and walked through the archway, raising an eyebrow at Angel, who stepped through behind him. They both vanished.

***

Angel and Spike walked back into the lab, Spike unperturbed, while Angel was dripping wet.

"Yay, it worked!" Fred said gleefully. "You actually transmitted!"

"The other end was in your clean room's showers," Angel said between gritted teeth.

Knox looked puzzled. "He seems fine. Why didn't he get as woozy as those rats?"

"Don't know," Fred mused. "Maybe the cold water worked better on him?"

"But we're missing the most important point!" Knox said.

"Right, he transmitted to the shower on his own," Fred said joyfully, hugging Angel despite how wet he was. "We didn't take him there all twitching on a lab cart!"

"See," Spike said to Angel, "Told you there was a reason they had the water running."

Knox set another lab rat to run through the archway, but instead of disappearing, the rat curled up in a little ball on the other side of the arch, squeaking ferociously and then began running about in circles.

Angel and Spike looked at one another in confusion as Fred pressed buttons and looked at readouts.

Knox said, "Guess I'd better go shock this poor rat back to its senses." He scooped it up into a tray.

Fred checked the readings, pointing another scanner at Spike. "The matter transmitter only worked without the lossy reconstruction because of the parabolic spectral rays emitted by Spike," Fred said, disappointed.

Glaring at them all, Angel said, "So, I guess it's not commercially viable? I'm guessing you won't sell enough of these to pay my dry cleaning bill?" He wrung out a sleeve of his suit jacket.

Knox chuckled. "Well, if we could produce a marketable quantity of souled vampiric ghosts..."

"Meaning, no," Spike asserted. "Come along, old man. There's some scotch with our names on it. Well, yours, but I can watch." He concentrated, putting a hand on Angel's shoulder and leading him out of the lab.

***

Fred sighed. "I was really hoping to publish. My name's been out of the scientific journals for too long. Again." Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she detached a segment of the arch with a powered screwdriver.

"I get the feeling W&amp;H has something to say about that, anyway," Knox said, tossing scrap metal into the county recycling bins.

"Let me guess." Fred rolled her eyes. "There was a clause somewhere concerning intellectual property rights?" She set down the screwdriver and reached for her face, but stopped herself before pushing phantom glasses up her nose.

"The firm takes care of all that, for our convenience," Knox replied sardonically, offering Fred a hand up. "Want to get that cup of coffee now?"

"Do I ever," Fred replied. She took his arm and they left the lab in their wake.

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge: Fred with optional Knox and/or Angel. At work in the lab at Wolfram &amp; Hart, science, humor. No schmoop, no smut. Also, check out http://www.wolfram.com.


End file.
